Conventional technology pertaining to certain embodiments of the present invention is described in the following publications inter alia:
EP 199090707 describes a dual function touch screen for a portable consumer electronics device, including computing a touch location signal and displaying a resulting cursor track signal.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,199,787 to Lee describes a touch screen and a method for generating a display via an external display device, including recognizing a touch pad location selected by a user and displaying a position on the external display, accordingly.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,870,496 describes a touchscreen remotely controlling a host computer in which the cursor is kept in the center of the display except when a center of a selected portion of a host image is close to an edge of the host image.
The user interface of current generation of hand held consumer electronic devices (such as smart phones and media players) is touch driven. An emerging trend in this area is the remoting of the user interface display of these devices onto external surfaces (either walls or screens) thus allowing the user to hold a consumer electronics (CE) device at a distance from the actual display. This may be done by the use of pico projectors, HDMI or DVI cables, or wireless video streaming technologies to stream the UI (user interface) of the CE device onto a computer or a media streamer connected to a TV. In addition, combinations and variations of the above are also possible, such as a physical HDMI connection to a third party device that transmits the video stream produced by the hand held device over a Wifi connection.
The user of the hand held device may interact with the device UI (user interface) using the touch interface, by putting one or more fingers on the touch screen and performing various gestures.
Existing technology includes using equipment either connected externally to the CE device (e.g. external mouse, keyboard or joystick) or already embedded in the CE device (such as DPAD or the SurePress technology of BlackBerry® Storm™). These devices may provide an image (such as mouse pointer) hovering above the place where the interaction may happen. Other instances of existing technology use depth sensing technologies in order to detect a finger/s before they touch the display and provide a visual indication of the location of the touch.
The disclosures of all publications and patent documents mentioned in the specification, and of the publications and patent documents cited therein directly or indirectly, are hereby incorporated by reference.